


it looks a little too much like christmas

by violetinfidel



Series: drabbles [7]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: i love the hot springs all around the hebra region, mostly i dont post drabbles from aus i have posted work on but, theyre all so pretty and soothing, this one is from my botw au, this one was really fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 05:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14784111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetinfidel/pseuds/violetinfidel





	it looks a little too much like christmas

The general consensus among them is that Red is, for lack of a better term, insane.

“We’ve been walking,” Blue says (or chatters, more accurately), “For two days now. Two days.”

“In the snow,” Green adds, helpfully, as if they could forget about it when they’re walking in knee-deep drifts.

Shadow, cheater that he is, has been using magic to float, and has also been subject to multiple rounds of snowballs, to keep things fair.

“I am still not quite sure what we are looking for out here.” Vio treads as lightly as he can, but even then he occasionally misses a step, sinks through the sleet and ends up with a soaked snow boot. “And I am not certain that it is wise to continue.”

Zelda nods her agreement from behind her five layers. “Really, Red, it’s too cold out here.”

Red laughs at that. “Zelda, c’mon, we used to live here!”

“It’s been years,” She says, “And I never liked the cold besides. That’s why we moved.”

“I’ve been offering you guys the fire rod we have.”

“It’s too hot,” Blue complains. She remembers all too well the burn she’d gotten the first time she’d handled one.

“Oh, the fire rod’s too hot, but the snow’s too cold. Pick one to complain about!”

“May I ask, again,” Vio cuts in, before someone can start an argument, “Where exactly we are headed?”

“It’s a surprise! I’ve told you that!”

“And how close’re we to this ‘surprise’?” Shadow asks. “I’m not even touching the snow and it’s miserable.”

“Close!”

“You’ve been saying that for five hours now.”

“I know, but I mean it this time! It’s just around back of this peak.”

And it is- but it’s also down a steeper drop of the mountain, one that they very carefully have to navigate. Red and Zelda are fish to water, make it down no problem, and Shadow cheats and just floats; the others are not so fortunate. Vio goes first, if only because he believes himself to be more sure-footed, chips away footholds in the frost with the toe of his boots and helps to guide the others down. Blue makes it okay, if a little shaken from a slip she’d had halfway down. Green falls.

It isn’t too far, and he lands in a snowdrift and hardly suffers more than a bruise, but it scares him, scares all of them more than they’d care to admit, and leaves Green shivering violently.

“It’s just around here,” Red says, more urgently, and keeps close to Green, offers the heat of the fire rod. He leads them through a break in the rock shelf into what seems an open-topped cavern, snow drifting in from above to melt on the bubbling surface of the water. “This way, c’mon!”

He skirts the pool until they make it to the back of the cavern; just an open end, they think, until Red starts walking through the water towards the wall. They look at him as though he’s crazy- he looks at them as though they’re ridiculous- and after a moment they follow.

Red sloshes through the water in front of them, guides them under a low rock and through what seems almost a tunnel, into a dead end.

The difference in temperature is immediately noticeable.

It was cold and dry outside, the steam freezing midair, but in the little cave it’s humid and comfortable and warm.

“I’d forgotten about this place,” Zelda says, peels off a scarf and a coat and sets them on a rock against the far wall, the one dry place in the secret spring.

Blue inspects the water, mistrusts the color of it. It’s a strange shade of teal, cloudy, almost opaque, and nothing like the deep blue of the oceans back at home. “What is it?”

“A hot spring.” She’s down to two layers, a record low since they’d passed Rito Village. “Geothermal activity heats the groundwater and sends it bubbling up in places like these.”

“There’s a couple,” Red adds, stripped down to his pants, and sits in the water like he’s in a hot tub. “This one’s Goflam, and there’s Sturnida and Sherfin too, I think.”

Green is fully clothed and sunk into the water up to his neck. “I like this place best. Out of everywhere.”

Blue pushes aside her skepticism, and also pushes aside Zelda to get a space in the deeper water, adds her outerwear to the growing pile and settles in. “None of these down by Lurelin,” She admits, “But we didn’t need ‘em, ‘cause the temperature never got down to negative a billion.”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” Red says with a roll of his eyes, and responds to her splashing in kind.

“He has a point,” Vio agrees, from his perch on the rock, “It cannot possibly be below a million.”

Shadow just shrugs. “Dunno what you’re talking about. I’ve been perfectly warm and dry the whole time.”

Vio shoves him into the water at everyone’s request, and offers his most innocent smile when Shadow glares at him from behind his soaked hair.

“Why aren’t  _you_ in,” He asks, with a certain acidity to the question, and a tone that suggests that he will be very soon, and not of his own volition.

“I would prefer not to get too wet. That is certain hypothermia.”

“We’ll dry up before we leave the springs! We can set a fire on the shore right outside here, it’s still kinda warm and it’s dry enough to catch a spark, and we can even have a hot meal before we leave!”

He’d like to be skeptical, but the promise of a hot meal is enough to satisfy him. “I am holding you to that,” He warns him, takes off what he’s willing to and finds a spot between Blue and Red.

“It’ll be the first in  _days_.”

“Weeks, it feels like.”

“Think we could keep it hot for the trip back? Not that I’ll have to be cold or anything.”

“Perhaps if we wrap it well it may preserve heat for a day, but likely no more.”

“We could always stop for another fire.”

“Is hot food all any of you are thinking about?”

“Yes,” They all say, or some variation of it, and Red has to laugh.

“It’s a good thing none of you live in Hebra.”

“I did,” Zelda reminds him. “You’re a freak of nature. No one likes the climate here.”

“ _I_ do!”

“You also claim to enjoy Eldin Canyon’s climate.”

“I  _do_!”

“Freak of nature,” Zelda says, as though proving a point, and makes an exaggerated gesture towards her brother.

There are murmurs of assent among them, and every single one of them gets mercilessly soaked by Red before they go.

When they do, it’s reluctantly, back outside in very little clothing to make their much anticipated hot meal, and there’s never been a fire started quicker.

Vio has the good sense to set it under an overhang, so no snow dampens the wood or their clothes, and they throw everything they have together into a potluck that could admittedly taste better (but the fact that it’s hot excuses the flavor, for the time being).

“We should rest here for the night,” Blue suggests, mostly because she has no intention of putting the fire out anytime soon.

Red is halfway to the fire with a flask of water, which she has half a mind to “accidentally” “spill” before it gets to where it’s going. “I thought you guys wanted to start back for the stable.”

“I think we want the fire,” Blue insists, and takes a defensive stance in front of the logs.

“Are you guys sure?”

He’s overruled in a 5-1 vote, so he shrugs and sets the water to boil and lays in the snow, completely comfortable.

“Red, that’s not healthy, get on a blanket at least.”

Stubbornly he settles into the drift, and bats away his sister’s hands.

“Red, you’re going to freeze.”

“It’ll be warm here in a minute.”

“Your clothes are going to get soaked again.”

“The fire’s right there.”

Zelda sighs, turns to Blue. “Blue, please tell him he’s going to freeze.”

“Red, you’re going to freeze.”

“I’m fine!”

“Can you at least get a blanket? At least that?”

“Oh, fine.” He reaches towards Vio, refuses to move. “Vio, could you get me my bedroll?”

He does, and drapes it over Red, hiding him from sight, and passes a cup of hot milk under for him.

“Red-”

“He is not here at the moment,” Vio says.

“You’re siding with  _him_?”

“Snow makes a sufficient insulator if you are not exposed to wind. There is a fire five feet away, regardless. He is in no danger of hypothermia.”

Red shouts “Ha!”, muffled as it is by the bedroll, and pushes out an empty cup from under it. A minute later he pushes it down, exposes the top half of his face. “Can’t breathe with this on me,” He says, by way of explanation, and folds his arms behind his head. “But Vio knows.”

Zelda turns an accusing look on Vio. “You said he was in no danger.”

“I said he was in no danger of  _hypothermia_. Freezing and suffocating are two very different things.”

“You did bury me in snow once,” Red points out, and grins at her. “When I was like, four. You said I was annoying you so you covered me up and walked off.”

“You weren’t supposed to  _stay_ in there!”

“Well,  _I_ didn’t know that, I just figured you’d come back when I was allowed to get out! The only reason I dug myself out was ‘cause I got hungry. Maybe if I hadn’t I woulda frozen to death.”

“ _Zelda_ ,” Green says in a mock-gasp. “Did you really?”

“What a mean sister, leaving her poor baby brother to freeze out in the snow.” Blue scoots over to affectionately ruffle Red’s hair. “I can’t  _believe_ you.”

“‘M’not a baby,” Red complains, but Blue shushes him, patting his cheek very obnoxiously.

“This poor tiny infant boy,  _abandoned_ ,” She says, ignores Red’s swatting. “Red, just a small little teeny tiny- Vio, help me out.”

“Minuscule?”

“-Minuscule baby infant-”

“Okay, Blue, we get it!”

“-All alone out in the cold bitter wild, waiting for his neglectful sister to come back for him-”

“It wasn’t like that,” Zelda argues, but she’s laughing.

“She let me try shield surfing when I was only five,” He adds, “Just sat me on it and shoved me down a hill. I was lucky I didn’t break my neck.”

“You’re just trying to get me in trouble, huh?”

“And this other time she had me build a fire all by myself, and I was, like, practically straight out of the womb-”

“You were six.”

“Only six years to my name, starting fires! And she gave me a  _knife_ to  _hunt with_ like a year later!”

“I am sorry to have to say this, but I will have to take custody of him,” Vio says, deadpan, “Clearly you are an unfit guardian for this child.”

“I’m not a child!”

“I will have to find him a foster that knows how to appropriately care for him.”

“I’ll take him,” Shadow says, and is immediately and unanimously vetoed.

“Red’s my new son,” Blue announces, pulls him up from his snow bed and cradles him dramatically against her chest, pins his arms when he tries to push away, laughing. “Everyone, Red’s my new son. And Vio can be godfather.”

“What am I?” Green asks.

“You’re the weird uncle.”

“So I’m your brother now?”

“…I take that back, weird cousin.”

“As my first decree as mother-”

“I do not think mothers issues decrees.”

“I decree that Red needs to clean his room.”

“I don’t have a room here!”

“Vio, he’s being defiant.”

“Teen angst,” Shadow suggests.

“Listen to your mother,” Vio chastises, “Tyrant though she is, you have no choice.”

“You guys are dumb,” Red snorts, shoves at Blue until she lets go and wraps himself in the bedroll. “I’m not a child. Green’s the youngest here, actually!”

“What, am I on the adoption block now?”

“I’ll be your mother too, but only ‘cause then I get to boss you around.”

“No  _way_ am I letting you do that.”

“Your children are out of line,” Shadow complains, in the best old-village-mother voice he can do. “Back in my day we sewed their mouths shut ‘til they were eighteen!  _Parents_ today,  _Hylia_!”

“You can go to bed early, mister.”

“Blue, you’re taking this too far.”

“Do I hear back-talk?”

“For the love of Hylia-”

“That’s it, young man, you’re grounded.”

Green looks to Vio for  _something_ , but all he gets is a wry smirk and a shrug.


End file.
